Umm al Fahm, one of the largest Palestinian cities in Israel’s 1948 borders, continues to lack street names and house numbers.

Of the 301 street names selected by the Umm al-Fahm municipality, the Israeli Interior Ministry has stalled the approval of 60.

All of the street names that have not been approved, Adalah: the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel reports, bear the names of Palestinian leaders, such as Mahmoud Darwish, Yasser Arafat, and Umm al-Fahm’s former mayors.

Attorney for Adalah Sawsan Zaher emphasizes that under Israeli law, the Interior Minister has no authority to prevent a municipality from naming streets as it wishes. Israeli municipalities are required by law only to notify the Ministry of new street names.

Member of Knesset Yousef Jabareen (Joint List), who is also a resident of the city, explains:

“The right to a residential address is a citizen’s basic right and it is inconceivable that in the 21st century in a city of 60,000 residents such as Umm al-Fahm, there are no street names or house numbers. The naming of streets is not strictly a technical matter, but rather allows the commemoration of cultural identity and national narrative. The Interior Ministry’s red tape is part of the ongoing denial of our unique identity as a national homeland minority.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opened an exhibition at UN headquarters on Thursday about the alleged Jewish connection to the occupied city of Jerusalem.

The idea for the exhibition originated with the Israeli Representative at the UN, Danny Danon, following US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the “eternal” capital of Israel.

During his opening speech, Netanyahu said that the Jewish connection to Jerusalem “is being denied by those seeking to erase the history of our people, our connection to our lands and our connection to our eternal capital Jerusalem.”

He claimed that Jewish history in Jerusalem goes back some 3,000 years, noting that this was even before Christianity.

“We [Israeli officials] are changing the world,” he boasted, adding: “We are changing Israel’s position in the world and above all we are making it clear that we fight for the truth and for our rights. We also fight for security.”

Netanyahu, in a flagrant challenge to UN and international law, opens an exhibition on Jerusalem at UN… https://t.co/LAS5mdQrfa

The UN has issued numerous resolutions reiterating that occupied Jerusalem is not part of Israel and it should be the capital of the future Palestine state. The 1947 UN Partition Plan, which Israel often cites as the legal justification for its existence and the occupation of Palestine, designated Jerusalem as a separate entity to be run by an international body. Israel ignored this and occupied West Jerusalem in 1948, and the Eastern half of the city in 1967.

In response to Trump’s announcement in December, the UN voted overwhelmingly against the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and said that Trump’s move is “null and void”.

At the entrance of the exhibition hall, a disclaimer states: “The content of this exhibit is solely the responsibility of the sponsors. The holding of the exhibit in UN premises does not imply endorsement by the United Nations. Please direct any queries to the organizers.”

A Palestinian young man identified as Omayr Shehadah, 19, was shot dead and another one identified as Hammam Sobhi, 16, was injured during clashes with the Israeli army in the village of Urif, to the south of Nablus in the West Bank.

Shehadah and Sobhi, along with other village’s residents, were confronting the Israeli Jewish settlers, who attacked the village of al-Tuwaneh, in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, on Saturday.

According to the Washington Post, the US Embassy to Israel will be based in a zone of East Jerusalem considered occupied territory under international law.

Part of the diplomatic compound that is scheduled to open as the embassy in just two months lies in the Arnona neighborhood, a contested No Man’s Land between East and West Jerusalem. Israel took control of the area in the 1967 war and so it is still considered occupied territory by the United Nations.

In two months, the United States plans to open a new embassy to fulfill Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. There's just one problem: The embassy may not be fully in Israel. https://t.co/cr9p4vULZS

The Israeli authorities have arrested more than 15,000 Palestinian women since the beginning of the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Jerusalem in 1967, official statistics revealed on Wednesday.

A report compiled by Abdel Nasser Ferwaneh, of the PLO’s Committee for Prisoners’ and Freed Prisoners’ Affairs, accused the Israeli occupation of escalating attacks against women over the past few years. He revealed that the Israelis have arrested 445 Palestinian women since the start of the Jerusalem Intifada in October 2015, including a number of girls.

Ferwaneh added that dozens of the women were shot and wounded by the Israeli occupation forces before their arrest. Fatemeh Taqatqa, 15, for example, was shot, wounded and arrested, before being pronounced dead in March last year whilst in detention.

You killed 180 Palestinian women in 08/09 seige of Gaza, and then another 230 in 2014.

You murder Palestinian women at checkpoints, and then plant knives beside their bodies.

“On most occasions, women are arrested from their homes at the dead of night,” explained Ferwaneh, “and they are beaten and subjected to harsh treatment and exposed to physical and psychological torture while under arrest.”

What’s more, he pointed out, Palestinian women inside Israeli jails are frequently denied proper medical treatment and are incarcerated alongside criminals regardless of their age or alleged wrongdoing. The latest Palestinian woman to be arrested by the Israelis, Ferwaneh noted, was Fatemeh Jarrar, 20, from the West Bank city of Jenin, who is a student at Al-Quds Open University.

The PLO official called for all local, regional and international human rights groups to put pressure on the Israeli occupation to release the Palestinian woman, as well as to fund support projects to empower them after their release.

At the moment, there are 63 Palestinian women and girls being held in Israeli jails, including eight university graduates, 10 minors, 20 married mothers and three who are under administrative detention with neither charge nor trial.

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are planning a six-week-long tent city protest near the Israeli border, starting on March 30, demanding that Palestinian refugees be allowed to return to their homes in Israel, organizers said on Wednesday.

Palestinian protesters along the Gaza border are frequently confronted by Israeli soldiers with tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition.

Ahmed Abu Ayesh, a spokesman for a coordinating committee, said plans were for hundreds or thousands of people, including entire families, to live in tents erected “at the nearest, safe point from the border”. The United Nations, Abu Ayesh said, would be notified of the rally.

A statement issued by the organizing committee urged Palestinians in Gaza to take part in this “national project that endorses peaceful resistance as a new way to win our rights, foremost the right of return” of refugees to what is now Israel.

The protest is set to begin on March 30, the annual “Land Day” commemorating the six Arab citizens of Israel who were killed by Israeli forces during demonstrations in 1976 over land confiscations.

It will end, the organizers said, on May 15, the day Palestinians call the “Nakba” or “catastrophe”, marking the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians by the creation of Israel in 1948.

In the town of Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, a Palestinian journalist got a jump-start on the protest, erecting two tents about 450 meters from the border fence, to promote the planned demonstration.

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